


you colored me blue

by writinginmeraki



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Denial of Feelings, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Love, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Protective!Arthur, Slow Burn, plz read i spent too much time on this and not on my college apps, pretty easy to understand tho lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 14:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19947340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writinginmeraki/pseuds/writinginmeraki
Summary: Arthur can't bear to look at him, because Eames' eyes are blue, just like the skies over his forgotten hometown.





	you colored me blue

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I'm nine years late to the Inception fandom, but I watched the movie about three months ago and fell in love. Then this fic was born. It's been on the hard drive since the first watch, and I thought it's about time I posted it.
> 
> Events that happened during and after the Fischer job are written in present tense, while everything that happened before is in past tense. 
> 
> At its essence, this is a story about finally finding home.

There was a job many years ago when Eames had been slammed by a car in the second layer of a dream, and his stomach and body was nothing but a tangle of organs and blood.

Arthur had run over immediately, helplessly staring at the overwhelming sight of blood. He fumbled for his totem, rolled it several times. Different numbers came up.

Eames was still smiling somehow, even while his lungs were rattling. “At least when I wake up my shirt will still be intact,” he barely choked out. Blood was spilling out of the edges of his lips, falling down on the shreds of skin that now made up his neck in little streams. “I know how much you like it.”

Arthur was shaking as he pulled out his gun, barely remembering to take the safety off. “Please shut up,” he says. “Or else I won’t put you out of your misery.” For some reason there are tears in the corners of his eyes. Years and years in this business, and somehow the sight of Eames in this state left him in pieces.

“You’re always so cruel,” Eames said jokingly, fondly, and Arthur finally shot him between the eyes.

\- - - -

One day in the warehouse, Ariadne asks Arthur for some advice for the design of the second dream level. Arthur is no architect, nothing like Cobb or Mal, but he happily obliges.

Eames passes by, a lazy grin on his lips. “Don’t ask Arthur for help, he’s got no imagination.”

Arthur rolls his eyes and decides not to engage.

Ariadne looks over her shoulder at Eames as he passes by. Conspiratorially, she leans in to Arthur and whispers, “You guys have history, don’t you?”

Arthur purses his lips and looks over the hotel design. Series of memories he’s packed neatly into the depths of his brain surface: hotel bedsheets, the dark blue of Eames’ eyes ringing dilated pupils, a funeral, Eames’ smile laced with blood spilling out the edges. “I suppose we do,” he says.

“How long have you known him?” she asks.

Arthur laughs. “You can’t really _know_ Eames,” he says. “He’s a liar.”

Ariadne is silent, and then a sly smile breaks out over her face as she flips through some pencil drawings. “Some history,” she says.

\- - -

“You accepted the job,” Arthur says flatly as Eames saunters into the warehouse. “I didn’t think you would.”

Eames smiles, tight-lipped. “Well, I won’t miss out on any opportunity to bother you.”

Arthur keeps his hands tucked behind him to stop them from reaching out to touch Eames’ cheek, to brush that one small piece of hair that’s escaped from the gel. Millions of questions run through his brain — _how have you been? have you been sleeping well? what jobs have you taken? why did you lie low for so long?—_ or the ones he’s suppressed the longest — _did you miss me? did you lie to me? have you found someone else to love?_

“I see your fashion sense hasn’t changed,” Arthur says instead.

“I tried something more of your taste so it wouldn't deeply wound your suited, buttoned soul,” Eames says, and then he turns to smile at Arthur, and something inside Arthur slows to a halt. He remembers that day, the day where they’d waken up from one of the most horrible missions they’d ever done, and Arthur had ran over to Eames, taking in the sight of that hideous shirt, his fingers trembling as he traced his skin. There was no blood, no spilled organs. Eames was alright. Intact, alive, breathing.

Eames had smiled as he woke up. “Didn’t know you cared that much,” he said. “You’re losing your touch, darling.” He’d gently pressed his hand into Arthur’s, and Arthur noticed but didn’t let go. His eyes caught on the upturn of Eames’ lips. Such a stupid smile, one that all con men had but Arthur had grown fond of. A smile that would occasionally appear in Arthur’s dreams on the few blissful days he could sleep.

Arthur grabs a file off a stack, searching for anything to starve off the memories, to sever them out of existence. “Here’s some information you need. Robert Fischer, he’s the son of—”

“Aren’t you tired?” Eames asks. It’s a question charged with more meaning than anyone else would realize. Arthur pauses mid-sentence, his fingers frozen over the pages. Eames reaches over, perhaps to cup his cheek.

“Don’t,” Arthur hisses.

Eames lets his hand drop to his side. “Right,” he finally breathes after a long period of stifling silence. “Right.”

\- - - 

After that horrible job, Arthur had followed Eames into his hotel room, a five star one overlooking the city of Hong Kong.

“I’d thought I’d lost you,” Arthur said.

Eames sat down on the bed and smiled softly. Not a con man’s smile. He can’t quite place what it is. “Do you want me gone that badly?” Eames asked.

“Not in that way,” Arthur said, and then he strode over to Eames and kissed him.  
The rest of the night there’s not much talking, just frenzied undressing and everything that follows, Eames’ hideous shirt ripped off and tossed to the ground next to the three-piece suit set crumpled and the buttons torn. The whole night Arthur ran his fingers over his body, searching for wounds and scars, breathing in how alive he is, consuming it all, just in case.

“Don’t do that ever again,” he whispered as he tucks his head into the crook of Eames’ neck. His body was warm.

“I won’t leave you,” Eames responded, but Arthur has already drifted off into oblivion.

\- - -

“Security is going to run you down.”

“And I will lead them on a merry chase.”

“Just be back before the kick.” There’s that teasing voice again, that beautiful smile Arthur can’t quite interpret.

“Go to sleep, Mr. Eames,” Arthur replies. The fondness creeps in uninvited, and Arthur tries to forget the image of Eames bleeding out, his organs tumbling out in front of him.

\- - -

Arthur woke up first in the morning, watched Eames in the sheets, his back gently rising and falling like a shallow wave. Alive.

Gently, he trailed a hand down Eames’ back, not certain if he were real. In the soft light his skin appeared almost translucent, as if he would disappear underneath his fingers, his body giving way to flowers of blood and organs.

Arthur collected his items quietly, slipping from the room as if he were just a projection in a dream. He turned around one more time in the doorway. There was that smile. It’s Eames’ smile, the smile that’s no longer a con man’s smile, a smile that’s meant just for Arthur that he can’t quite understand.

He can’t love him. There’s no room for love in his job — he runs with no end in sight, no home to fall back on. Arthur has always believed he would grow old, lonely and regretful, a man wracked with trauma who wasted his years away in half-remembered dreams and in the edges of reality and lies. Becoming nothing but a hopeless, pitiful projection, waiting for the last kick into death.

\- - -

When Arthur first met Yusuf, the first thing he noticed was how loose the handshake was, as if Yusuf doesn’t want to get too close. Second thing he noticed is how Yusuf’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

“You’re the one that Eames always talks about,” Yusuf finally said.

Arthur smiled cautiously. “We have a friendly rivalry,” he replied shortly.

“Friendly rivalry, my ass,” Yusuf scoffed, shaking his head. A pregnant pause, one clearly filled with unspeakable accusations. “You broke his heart, you know.”

Arthur was quiet, the shadows in the warehouse throwing his whole face in contrast. Finally, he spoke. “I know.”

\- - -

The first job together, Arthur was late and fuming.

He’d touched down in Madrid, running on nothing but pure coffee and two hours of dreamless sleep. In somewhat of a disorientated haze, he’d located his one small luggage and headed to the taxi line to the hotel where the rest of the team was waiting.

A man bumped into him in the rush to the taxi line, which felt something akin to slamming into a brick wall. “Sorry,” the man mumbled underneath an abnormally ugly hat that looked like a bastardization of the Sherlock hunting hat, and brushed past him with the delicacy of a polar bear.

Moments later, Arthur patted his coat for his wallet and realized it was gone.

Cobb had to come pick him up in a rented car, laughing as he pulled into the airport. “You’re going to be late for once,” he said. “You’ve broken your streak.”

“Don’t remind me,” Arthur grumbled. “If I find that man again with that stupid deerstalking hat, I _will_ skewer him.”

When he arrived, he was greeted by Mal’s radiant smile, the curls of her hair bouncing around her face. The other person he was unfamiliar with at the time: Eames, his legs crossed and his body leaned back in a hotel chair like he owned the place.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur said, politely and all business. “I’m usually never late. I apologize for holding you all back. Now, let’s start with the mark.”

Eames looked at him with mirth lining his eyes. “Are you usually this boring?

Mal choked down a laugh.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Arthur said, mildly annoyed but too tired to care. “Are you here for vacation? Because we don’t need tourists in the field.”

“You’re feisty, aren’t you, darling,” Eames announced to the room. Even Cobb broke a smile — an absolute betrayal.

Arthur glared at Eames, hoping he would shrivel up under his glare. Eames only smiled cheekily back, eyes crinkling at the edges.

After the meeting and briefing — a morally sound mission, one concerned with extracting information about where and when a kidnapping would occur— Arthur packed up and headed to his room.

Eames stepped in front of him just as the elevator door opened. Rolling his eyes, Arthur tried to duck under his arm, but the elevator door closed with a mocking _ping_.

“I think I have something you might be interested in,” Eames teased suavely.

“My sanity, yes, now let me through.”

“So you don’t want this,” Eames said and pulls something square and thick out of his pocket. “You sure you don’t want this anymore, darling?”

It’s his wallet.

“You will have to forgive me, darling, I didn’t have any money on me—” Eames tried to say, but was effectively interrupted by a punch landing beautifully in the center of his lips.

When Arthur looks back on it, the wallet is the first in a long line of things Eames will steal from him. Arthur actually has a list in his notebook, titled _items stolen_ : an energy bar, a wine bottle, an entire PASIV, a deck of cards, a watch, a passport, another wallet, and eventually, inexorably, pieces of his heart.

\---

Eames returns sometime in the night smelling like ink and papers.

Arthur looks up from his laptop, lines of numbers and credit card transactions imprinted in his vision. “How was your research on Browning?” he asks formally. He reminds himself that Eames is nothing but a colleague, a work partner. Not someone who has seen the worst parts of him, not someone he slept with several times, and definitely not someone who loves.

“Don’t worry about me, darling,” Eames says. Arthur flinches on the last word, but Eames doesn’t seem to notice as he takes out a cigarette and lights it.

“I thought you quit,” Arthur says, watching the end occasionally flare up with a burnt orange.

“I fell back into old habits,” Eames says pensively. His next words are calculated. “I suppose we all get addicted to things we can’t have.”

Arthur bites his lip and turns back to the computer, back to the lines of numbers and words that’s stopped making sense to him.

\---

There was another night, like many other nights many years ago, that Arthur tries to forget.

It happened some time in three in the morning, just when he was ready to slip into a dreamless sleep. There was a loud bang on his window, and Arthur ignored it at first. Then several successive ones followed, and out of instinct he leapt out of bed and grabbed the gun out of the drawer. He quickly moved over to the window, heart pounding.

He counted to three and then threw open the shades, pointing his gun forward. There was Eames in all his glory, grinning happily at him, with a window cutter already aligned innocently on the window.

“Surprise, darling!” Eames said, or at least that’s what Arthur thought he said. He couldn’t quite hear Eames through the window.

Arthur rolled his eyes so hard he almost gave himself a headache. He contemplated just leaving Eames out there, but remembered the window cutter. Reluctantly, he unlatched the window.

“It’s three in the morning,” Arthur stated curtly at Eames’ grinning face.

“When has that ever stopped me, darling?”

“I’m going to push you through the window,” Arthur replied, and he seriously considered it.

“You wouldn’t,” Eames said as he struggled to fit his muscled body through the small window frame. “You miss me too much.”

It was true, maybe just slightly true, but Arthur would never admit that. Attempting to look displeased, he asked, “What are you doing here?”

“I’m only here to establish an alibi,” Eames said. “I may have upset some important people. You know how it is.”

“That’s the only reason you’re here?” Arthur said, sitting down on his bed and crossing his legs.

“Well, not exactly, darling.” Arthur blinked once and Eames was already directly in front of him, swallowing up his entire field of vision. A hand slowly traced Arthur’s jaw, and he felt Eames’ breath against his lips, hot and heavy. Suddenly, despite all logic and all reason, Arthur wants to feel those lips pressed against his.

“I missed my favorite point man,” Eames said, voice husky and deep, and those lips are on his. It’s dark but Arthur was free falling into light, and something inside him flickered into a flame as he grabbed Eames’ tie and pulled his body onto his.

-

Later, when all was said and done, Eames pulled Arthur close to his body. “Stay,” Eames whispered into his ear. “Don’t go like you always do.”

Arthur never stays.

\---

They're working late into the night, the word Fischer dancing in their heads like an inescapable elevator song, when Arthur asks the question.

“Are you here for me again?” The words are barely above a whisper; it melts into the silence, as if they were never meant to be said.

Eames sighs and leans his chair back. “If I said I was, what would you say?”

Arthur grips his notebook so hard that the edges might start crumbling. “Please stop this,” he says.

Eames leans in, his breath hot against Arthur’s. Arthur’s eyes fall to his lips almost automatically, but he moves his head away immediately. “Are you trying to make me fall out of love with you?”

Arthur is still. “You don’t love me.”

Eames shakes his head in frustration, and then reaches up to touch his cheek. Arthur doesn’t slap it away this time.

“You know what the truth is,” Eames says.

“You’re a con man, Eames,” Arthur says quietly, plainly. “You love to lie.” 

“I never lie to you,” Eames replies, and his voice is soft and loving. The words sting because they’re true. 

“I wish you would,” Arthur whispers.

_You’re making this harder than it already is_ , Arthur wants to say, but he swallows the words down, casting them back to his subconscious.

\---

Another job, two years ago, Eames almost died.

It was a job in Shanghai to extract product development plans from a large corporation, commissioned by the rival company. A rival extraction team had been after the same mark, and just when Arthur’s team had woken up and cleared everything out, they’d been attacked.

While fighting their way out, Eames had gotten shot.

Arthur barely managed to drag Eames to an abandoned shed located behind a couple of festering waste bins. It wasn’t a dream, this was real, and Arthur looked at the slowly growing circle of red on the hideous shirt. He tore the shirt open, his fingers shaking, and stared at the dark bullet hole in his gut. “Jesus,” he breathed. “It’s bad.”

Eames retained his smile somehow, stupidly grinning up at him. “Can’t go to the hospital here,” Eames said, almost proudly. “The Shanghai police are still angry at me.”

Arthur’s vision blurred with the sight of red, seeing nothing but dream with the car and Eames’ body, practically split apart with the hit. Frenzied, his mind barely functioning, he ripped part of Eames’ shirt off and tied a basic bandage.

“You need to stop doing this,” Arthur said. “You need to stop taking jobs with me. You keep getting hurt.”

Eames ignored him. “You always look so cool,” he hummed, reaching out to brush a curl of hair from Arthur’s head that’s fallen out of place.A laugh barely coughed its way up. “Your suit’s all messed up. The tie is crooked.”

Arthur swallowed. “If you’d listened to me when I said to get out through the back door, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Eames nodded weakly, not really listening. “I didn’t expect this to happen ever,” Eames said, vaguely gesturing at the air. “You, tearing off my shirt in a darkened room.”  
“This is not the time to joke,” Arthur said, pulling the motorcycle over to the opening of the shed. Panic slowly rose up in his veins as he rechecked the wound.

“I guess this shirt is ruined for good,” Eames mused, his voice still playful. “Must make you happy.”

Arthur slowly loaded Eames onto the back of the motorcycle. “Hang onto me,” he instructed, placing Eames’ arms gently around his waist. “It’s going to be a fast ride.”

“I’m getting more and more grateful that I was shot,” Eames joked, wrapping his arms tighter around his waist like a lifeline. Arthur peeled out of the side road and onto a main road at breakneck speed, weaving in and out of traffic and though three red lights.

Eames’ breathing got weaker and weaker with every passing second, and Arthur felt blood beginning to seep into the back of his suit. “Stay with me, Eames,” he said, over and over. “Stay with me.”

“If you’d let me,” Eames whispered, but it’s lost in the honks and beeps.

-

Arthur stayed with him for the following three days, grasping his hand.

He thought of Eames, with his flashy shirts and his sharp blue eyes and the cocky tilt of his head, and the way his pained smile was dressed in blood. He thought about all of the funerals he has seen before, far too much, and how Eames’ body would slowly decompose into soil, and how his fingers would become flowers and his brain filled with moss.

He thought about the blue skies of his hometown and if Eames is dreaming of home in his sleep. He wondered what home looks like to Eames. Maybe the gloomy clouds of England, laden with the promise of rain. Maybe the musty, loud gambling dens of Mombasa, with the adrenaline of the game and the scent of stolen wins. Maybe he didn’t dream of places as homes, but people, because that was Eames. He’d slip into personalities left and right like trying on clothes and make little homes out of them, snuggle into the smallest crevices and call it his own.

If Eames had made a home out of him, he’d made it well.

-

He was crying silently, stupidly, childishly, when Eames finally woke up.

“Are you crying?” Eames coughed.

Arthur wiped furiously at his eyes. “No,” Arthur finally responded. “No, I’m not.”

“You’re crying,” Eames said, incredulous.

“Shut up, I’m not,” Arthur insisted.

Eames chuckled. “Am I your boyfriend or something? Because this is cheesy, even for me.”

Arthur rolled his eyes. “You wish, you imbecile,” are the words, but Eames pressed his hand deeper into Arthur’s and Arthur didn’t let go.

-

Later, Cobb sat next to Arthur, surveyed the darkening circles underneath his eyes. “Do you love him?” he asks quietly.

“I don’t know,” Arthur said, and thought of sleepless nights shared with Eames under sheets. The real answer was that he wishes he didn’t.

\- - - 

It’s another late night prepping for the Fischer job, and both Arthur and Eames are awake.

“I suppose you're the only person who can test the PASIV with me,” Arthur says resignedly.

Eames smiles and moves into a chair near the machine. “Of course, darling.”

Arthur avoids Eames’ eyes as he methodically pulls the wires out and connects Eames to the machine. They’re close, so close, and Eames watches with that stupid smile dancing across his lips as Arthur’s fingers dance over the wires and needles.

Somewhere in the darkness, their hands find each other.

“Why did you leave?” Eames asks.

Arthur doesn’t press the button on the PASIV. “Did it leave a scar?” he circumvents. “Shanghai.”

“Is this what this is about?” Eames says. He presses his forehead against Arthur’s, breathes deeply. Arthur sees the blue of his irises, like the sky of his hometown in midsummer, and it reminds him of home so much that he has to look away.“Is this why you won’t stop running away from me?”

“It’s complicated.”

“It’s really not that complicated,” Eames says, exasperated. In the dim overhead light, his dark silhouette is ringed with gold, his eyes are bright like stars.

But it is. Eames is bursting at the edges with energy and creativity, and somewhere hidden behind the tattoos and his muscled body is a heart that might fall apart with passion. If Eames is a fire, Arthur is just the smoke, fading fast against the night.

Arthur gently rests his hand against his cheek, the stubble tickling his palm, making sure he is real. Making sure that he didn’t die back in that car crash or with a smile ringed with blood in Shanghai.

He’s real, and he’s afraid. Of him. Of losing him.

“It is,” Arthur somehow chokes out with his voice still steady. “You make me want things I can’t have.”

(“ _I just want you to stop running,” Eames says, his eyes on Arthur’s lips._

_“I’m trying.” He closes his eyes and lets Eames kiss him, just barely, and then he presses the button on the PASIV.)_

_ \--- _

When Mal died, Arthur called him for the first time.

“Make me forget,” he’d said when Eames had shown up at the door. His shaking, wandering hands drifted up to Eames’ collar, frantically undoing his tie. “Make me forget.”

Eames had pursed his lips, rubbed the tears off his cheeks. “I’m not going to do what you want me to do,” he’d replied as he buttoned his shirt back up. “Not like this.”

The entire night, he’d held Arthur on the couch, kissing his forehead, kissing the tears that fell down on his cheeks. Arthur had fallen asleep in his arms, and dreamt of his hometown, of blue that stretched for miles across the sky.

-

At the funeral, Arthur was back into place. Not a single article of clothing was out of place, once again hidden behind that facade of cool, detached perfection. Not a single tear was shed.

It was here, when he was standing over Mal’s dead body, that a decision was made. It was here, seeing how cold and stiff her body was, how those eyes would never shine with that sharp intelligence and wit, how lifeless and pale and small she lay in that small coffin that could barely hold her limitless imagination, how her infinitesimal creations and fantastical worlds she built would die with her. It was the realization that she would only exist in Arthur’s memory, such a fragile and undependable thing, and that inexorably pieces of her — the way her hair curled, the way her hands folded with a certain grace, how her eyes narrowed in deep thought — would disappear with the coming years, until she was stripped of her complexity, becoming nothing but a shadow in the brain.

It was here, looking over her dead body with his already empty world crashing down around him and Eames’ hand resting almost imperceptibly at the small of his back, that he decided that love is a liability.

-

After Mal’s death, Arthur hasn’t stopped working. He runs around the globe with Cobb, trying to escape jail and death. In the back of his mind, he’s tired. He’s lonely. He hasn’t been happy for a long time. He wants to stop running. 

He’s crashing, tripping over the edges of his own reality, dragged down by the burden of his own life. Some days, he refuses to sleep and spends all night rolling his die even though he knows each number is different. Some days, he wonders how it is like to jump out of the window of the hotel he’s at, how Mal must have felt. He imagines it must feel like flying at first, like freedom, wind becoming your bones and blood. He imagines that hitting the ground would hurt, but then he’d be dead but free.

“Aren’t you tired?” Eames asked him half a year after Mal’s funeral. Arthur hadn’t seen him ever since he’d decided to follow Cobb around the world, living out of suitcases and in hotels austere and cold and nothing like home. And yet Eames was here in Berlin, intending to self-enlist himself in the next job for his sake. “Aren’t you tired of all this?”

They sat together on the edge of the hotel bed, with Eames’ hands folded in his. Arthur couldn’t look at him, because his eyes are blue, just like home.

“I’m fine,” Arthur snapped, and tries to forget.

“You don’t have to do this, Arthur,” he said, insistent.

“You know nothing about loyalty,” Arthur breathed. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

Eames’ face grew dark and stormy, lips stopped in the middle of forming words. It’s stony, as if someone had shut the shutters on a window. “I’m a liar, I know, but don't act like I don’t understand.”

“You should understand why I’m choosing this.”

“Stop throwing yourself away,” Eames suddenly burst out. “You can’t dream anymore. You barely sleep anymore. Do you even take jobs anymore because you enjoy dream sharing? How many times have you barely escaped death? You keep running and running, and for what? You’re just running and running with no destination in mind, from one country to another to another to dream and dream without any true hopes in mind, and leaving pieces of yourself behind wherever you go. All you’re gonna become is regret. You’re gonna become a shell of a man obsessed with work, and you’re going to wither away to a man who never really dreamed.”

Arthur was still. Eames knew the early Arthur, when the military dream-sharing experiment was terminated, erased from existence. Arthur had been been killed and killed and killed in thousands of unimaginable ways in dreams, yet he’d still chased after dream sharing like war-torn boys going home, starry eyed and hopeful. He’d been enamored with dream sharing — in love with what it could do, fascinated with what it could mean for him, for the world —

And here he was. Broken, scrambling for some fix when there is none. He’d fallen so far from that glorified vision. He’s so tired, so tired, but this was all he has left. The work, the emptiness — this is all he knew, and maybe that’s all he deserved.

“I’m doing what’s right. I don’t think you would understand.”

“You always act like you have moral superiority,” Eames spat out. “I won’t take this condescension from you.”

“Fine. Don’t,” Arthur said, but it sounds so broken and sad, and Eames’ face softened with the sound.

“Arthur. Let me stay with you.” He pressed kisses slowly on the crown of his forehead, and then pulled him close to his chest. Under the thin shirt Arthur could feel Eames’ heart beating, frenzied but alive. “Let me stay.”

He almost said yes, but he remembered the gunshot in Shanghai, the broken body from the car. He remembered how Eames looked that one morning when he woke up early to make breakfast, in pure bliss, blue eyes crinkled at the edges, a smile always painted lazily on his face.

He loves him and he shouldn’t.

Arthur captured his lips and pulled him down. It’s not an agreement, it’s avoidance, and Eames probably saw right through it. In the morning he left with Cobb, leaving Eames alone in the sheets. He looked so at peace, with his lips slightly upturned and swollen, hair a mess framing his face. It’s one of the hardest things he’s ever done.

He didn't look back.

\---

No matter how much he wants to deny it, he misses Eames, misses the way his hands felt in his, misses his questionable fashion and his easy smile and the way his eyes crinkle at the edges.

Sometimes he dreams that he’d stayed. It’s a lie he lets himself indulge in. It’s the closest he’ll ever let himself get to him now.

\---

the test-run:

Eames dreams of a blue sky.

“I can’t love you,” Arthur says. 

“Why can’t you?” Eames says, his eyes large and wide and full of hope. “There’s no reason you can’t.”

A kiss on his forehead, long and sincere. “Say the word, and I’m yours.”

Ariadne finds him at the baggage claim after the Fischer job.

“You know, Eames is waiting for you,” she says.

“Is he?” Arthur asks, and chances a glance over his shoulder. He indeed is there, in his nice, unoffensive suit, leaning against the baggage cart. He looks good, even if he’s been shuffled and bumped around in the crowded LAX airport, and Arthur’s heart reminds him _no._

“Yusuf told me about how you broke his heart,” Ariadne says knowingly. “I’m sure you’re aware.”

Arthur locates his luggage and takes the opportunity to preoccupy himself.

“Hey, stop ignoring me,” Ariadne says, and grabs his wrist viciously and spins him around to face her. Her grasp is like a vice, and Arthur can feel the sharp nails against his skin. “Arthur, Eames may be the better liar, but you’re best at lying to yourself.”

Ariadne yanks him closer to her, and Arthur curses as he drops the luggage on his foot in surprise. Somewhere behind him, Eames begins laughing — presumedly, at him.

“Listen to me, Arthur. Don’t break his heart again,” Ariadne hisses. “Because you’ll end up breaking your own again, too.”

-

Arthur has an apartment in LAX, but instead he goes with Eames.

They shove their luggages at the cramped trunk of an overpriced cab and book one hotel room together, talking all the while about the simplest things. It feels so natural, so comfortable, that Arthur falls asleep on the couch of the hotel room in the middle of his description of the anti-gravity kick.

When he wakes up, Eames has just left the shower, his hair ungeled and in nothing but a pair of blue boxers. His eyes are wide and unbelieving, and they are blue. Just like the sky back where he grew up, when the sun was warm and unrelenting on kids’ backs as they ran barefoot down the concrete chasing for shades, when times were simpler and nightmares were forgotten with the arrival of the new day.

They are blue, and they are home. 

“I’m sorry,” Arthur says, and hopes Eames understands. At least he tries to say it, but then Eames traps the words between their mouths. It’s a strange dance, hands roaming and mouths searching, as they make their way to the bed.

“Wait,” Arthur says when he catches his breath. “Let me finish.”

“Shut up, darling,” Eames says, breath hot on his jaw. “Can’t you tell I’m busy?”

“I’m serious,” Arthur retorts, but he’s smiling. “I’ve been thinking.”

“You think too much, it’s getting quite boring, darling,” Eames says, and then they stop talking for awhile after that.

-

Later, Arthur places a head between the crook of Eames’ neck and breathes him in. It’s familiar. He’s been all over the world, running without really knowing where he was going, and somehow it all leads back to the same forger with the beautiful smile and the warm eyes, who never loses a game of poker, who writes words like little pieces of art, who makes little homes out of people and burrows down to stay.

The memory of his hometown has been fading, just like how he can’t quite remember how Mal’s laugh sounds or how her smile curved, but there are new homes now. There’s a compass in Eames’ smile and a map in that heart and a world in those eyes, and there’s a happiness bursting in Arthur’s veins, an old friend that has finally returned.

He shouldn’t feel so happy, it doesn’t feel possible, so he reaches for his totem.

Eames puts his hand around his wrists and stops him, lacing his fingers through his. “You’re not dreaming,” he whispers.

“I know this is real,” Arthur says. He decides it’s time to be honest. It’s only fair. To himself. To Eames. “You’re the realest thing I’ve ever had.”

Eames shifts over to face Arthur directly. Arthur knows the question before it’s even asked. “Then why did you leave?”

Arthur’s voice cracks a bit. He thinks of Shanghai, of the car crash. “I was afraid,” he admits. “I didn’t want to lose someone else I loved again.” Another pause. “I didn’t want to lose _you_.”

“The only way you’re going to lose me, Arthur, is if you keep running from me,” Eames says.

Arthur knows, he’s known all this time. “I know.”

“Cobb’s finally back home,” Eames says. “You don’t need to be on the run anymore.”

“I know,” Arthur says, sounding something like a broken record.

“Stop sacrificing yourself for everyone,” Eames says. “You sacrifice yourself enough, protecting Mal, Cobb, me. When will you stop? When will you stop running from me?”

Arthur plants a kiss softly on Eames’ lips. Something sparks in his chest, and it’s home, Eames is home. After all this time, of empty nights in hotels in countries unforgiving and strange in tired eyes, home was always in arm’s reach, waiting for him to realize it.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, and this time he means it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment if you enjoyed. <3


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